Friday, July 18, 2014

Can We Talk?

Gaza is burning, planes are falling from the sky, insanity is running wild, but this is Friday. Who wants to deal with all that heavy shit? Let's talk comics.

As you may or may not know I am a comic geek from way back, and this has been a amazing week in comics.

Some fans are riled and a few are pleased by the fact that Thor the God of Thunder has apperently been forced by Obamacare into a sexual reassignment surgery.

"The inscription on Thor’s hammer reads ‘Whosoever holds this hammer, if HE be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.’ Well it’s time to update that inscription," said Marvel editor Wil Moss in a statement. "The new Thor continues Marvel’s proud tradition of strong female characters like Captain Marvel, Storm, Black Widow and more. And this new Thor isn’t a temporary female substitute – she’s now the one and only Thor, and she is worthy!"

Wait, there’s more.
"This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR,” said writer Jason Aaron. “This is the THOR of the Marvel Universe. But it’s unlike any Thor we’ve ever seen before."

And now Captain America is black.

Superhero Sam “The Falcon” Wilson will take over as the patriotic Avenger in an upcoming installment of the long-running comic book series, Marvel Comics chief creative officer Joe Quesada said Wednesday during an appearance on Comedy Central’s ‘‘The Colbert Report.’’

The change will come this November in ‘‘All-New Captain America’’ No. 1. The character was recently portrayed by actor Anthony Mackie in the film ‘‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

I am very cool with this. The Falcon has been a part of Captain lore since I was a wee little whacker. The storyline goes that the real Captain, Steve Rodgers, has had the super soldier formula stripped from his body and is now showing his actual age. When one hero falls another rises to take his place.

But the most shocking development has been in a comic I never really followed that much, Archie. I tend to go for the hero and heroin heroine comics. Archie's big riff was always "Betty or Veronica," but here he meets his end as a hero worthy of the finest pages of Marvel or DC.

Freckle-faced Archie will meet his demise when he intervenes in an assassination attempt on senator Kevin Keller, Archie Comics’ first openly gay character, who’s pushing for more gun control in Riverdale. Archie’s death, which was first announced in April, will mark the conclusion of the ‘‘Life with Archie’’ series.

"I think Archie Comics has taken a lot of risks in recent years, and this is the biggest risk they’ve taken yet," said Jonathan Merrifield, a longtime Archie fan who hosts the Riverdale Podcast about all things Archie. "If it shakes things up a little bit, and people end up checking it out and seeing what’s going on in Archie Comics, it will be a risk that was smartly taken."

I was a teen when the Dark Phoenix saga ended in the death of Jean Grey. I cried and cried. Jean was gone for quite a long while in comic book terms, but low and behold one day she returned. Unlike the rest of us, the mortality of fictional characters should always be taken with a grain of salt.